Sunday 10 April 2022

Reflection:    “Hosannas Before the Storm”

Isaiah 50:4-9

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

Luke 19:28-40

Philippians 2:5-11

Let’s imagine that it’s Cracker Night (when it was still legal, that is, a number of years ago).
You take a cracker, a nice big one, a “bunger”, get your match, light the cracker and throw it away into a clear space.
You wince your body, cover your ears, and wait, but….…nothing happens.
So, you walk over to it, kick it with your boot, look at it a little more carefully and sense that it’s gone out.
You pick it up, break it in half and now you know for sure that it’s a dud.

Well, I think that might have been a bit like how Palm Sunday went, all those years ago, in Jerusalem. 
Jesus came into town riding on a young donkey, a colt - and the expectations of a big bang event were high.
But it all ended up being a dud, just a plain fizzer.        
Let me explain. 

On this day, when Jesus came riding into town, there were heaps of people in Jerusalem.
That’s because, it was a requirement for all Jewish men to make a pilgrimage to the Passover festival in Jerusalem, at some time in their life.
We know now that Jesus had a much higher motive than this for his visit.

As Jesus slowly entered that city, people were jamming the streets and they were yelling,
“It’s the Messiah. Hosanna, it’s the Messiah, the Messiah is coming, just as it’s been promised in the scriptures.”
They’d heard about him and were excited about what he was going to do to help them out of their predicament – the occupation of their lands by the Romans.
Of course, they were expecting a warrior king - but that’s not the message that Jesus planned to bring to them.

Soon their voices became one and they chanted together, “Hosanna to the Son of David.” 
They ripped the clothes off their backs and tossed their cloaks on the ground in front of Jesus, grabbed palm branches and were waving them with gusto.

As Jesus approached the centre square of the city, the crowd was intense, shoulder-to-shoulder.
Jesus got down off the donkey, and the crowd were wondering what he was going to say and do next.
Wondering if all the angels from heaven were going to come down right now.
But Jesus simply got off his donkey, walked into the temple where he had taught so many times before.
They probably said to one another:“Maybe the temple will fall apart; maybe it’ll explode.
Who knows what’ll happen next?”

The Pharisees, who were afraid that the Romans would not like all the commotion, asked Jesus to stop exciting the crowd, but Jesus replied that even if the people were silent, the stones would shout out.

Well, that may have been how it was on that first Palm Sunday. 
What had happened, they would have wondered?
Why did it turn out to be such a non-event, such a dud?

It seems like the people of God had misunderstood the promises of God.
It has happened throughout history and is still happening today.

In the early days of the relationship with God and his people, as we read in the Old Testament, God promised the people that he would give them the Promised Land. 
God promised to give his people the land of Israel, a good land, a beautiful land, a lush land. 
But what did the Promised Land turn out to be?
It was filled with all sorts of other people who were happily settled in the land, so it took 200 years to conquer it. 
200 years of fighting to make the promised land their own. 

Was that part of God’s promise?
The Jews had heard only the part of the promise that they wanted to hear.
The part they liked was where God said: “I’ll give you a land filled with milk and honey.”
The Jews didn’t hear, or didn’t want to hear, the hard part where it would take 200 years to conquer it.
We still twist the promises of God and only hear what we want to hear, omitting the hard parts of the promise.

Everywhere in the Old Testament there are promises of the coming Messiah.
The Messiah was going to be a wonderful counsellor, mighty God, an everlasting father, and the prince of peace.
This new Messiah was going to bring justice and peace to the land.

Then, along comes Jesus, riding into town on a donkey, just like the prophets had foretold.
But what did the promise turn out to be?
Did this person turn out to be a wonderful counsellor, mighty God, everlasting father and prince of peace?
Not in their eyes, because they weren’t looking for such a person - as I said earlier, they wanted a warrior King.

This Messiah turned out to be a carpenter who rode on a jackass and got himself killed by Friday afternoon, so it didn’t work out the way they wanted, at all.  

He didn’t meet their expectations.

Once again, the Jews picked out only the best parts of the promise, the best parts of the passage, the flower of the rose (but not the thorns), the best parts of the scriptures, omitting all the other parts of the promise.

All throughout history, we’ve taken the promises of God and twisted them to meet our own ends; we twist the promises of God to meet our own happiness; we twist the promises of God to meet our own expectations.

So, what is it that we want?
Well, we certainly want to avoid anything that has to do with suffering, death, struggle or sacrifice.
We omit all those parts of the promise.

To use a floral analogy, we want the rose blossom, but we don’t want the thorny stem.
We want the top glorious red, pink. yellow blossoms, but not the thorns. 
We always want ‘Palm Sunday’, but not ‘Passion Sunday’ – the Sunday leading to the passion of Christ on the cross. 
And that’s what happened on that first Palm Sunday. 
God promised Passion Sunday, but the people wanted the drama of Palm Sunday. 
The people of God didn’t want to hear about anything that had to do with executions, crosses, suffering and death.

It seems to me that whether it’s a promise about peace, or abundant life, or freedom, all these great promises from God involve struggle, suffering, discipline, death, and injustice.

There are always big thorns on that rose bush, and we, the people of God, intuitively want to avoid that.
We want to delete that part of the promise.

God has promised us a new kingdom, so let’s not distort what he’s offering by just looking on the rosy side.
We also need to take the hard parts with the good.
Make no mistake, this new kingdom will be beautiful.

It surely was an extremely testing and trying time for Jesus. 
It was the culmination of his ministry and the basis for the faith of those of us who are called Christians, his disciples. 

Let’s thank God for his generosity to us, by working hard to build his kingdom here on earth.
And so, we await the passion of Jesus as it unfolds before us in the coming Holy Week.

He endured all of this for us, so that our sins are forgiven and we can join him after we pass on from this mortal life.

Blessings on this commencement of Holy Week……..Pastor Rick